Police said 20 children who had been abducted and forced into pickpocket gangs in southern China, where some had been held as long as four years, returned home to China's northwest Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Thursday.

The children were freed after police broke up the child-abduction gang last month.

Police in the coastal province of Guangdong escorted 17 boys and three girls, aged eight to 16, to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, by train.

The children, wearing new clothes and carrying bags of food, appeared healthy and relaxed at the Urumqi Railway Station. Some parents came to the station, but many children will stay in a local care facility until police locate their families.

Guangdong police broke up a 22-member gang on May 14 in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, said Yaksengyang Ibrayim, commissar of a police detachment of the public security bureau of Guangzhou.

The kidnappers, who have been detained by police, confessed that they promised jobs to the children in impoverished regions in Xinjiang and took them to Guangzhou.

Instead, they trained the children how to steal and forced them to hand in 2,000 yuan (292 U.S. dollars) to 5,000 yuan a day. Those who couldn't bring in that much faced abuse, such as cigarette burns or whippings.

Police have set up ID files for each child and were trying to contact their parents, said Ibrayim.

Chinese police launched a nationwide campaign against the trafficking of children and women in early April, which will run through this year.

According to the Ministry of Public Security, police rescued 196 children and 214 women and broke up 72 human trafficking rings from April 9 to May 4.

Most of these crimes occurred in Guizhou, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong, Henan and Shanxi provinces.

(Xinhua News Agency June 18, 2009)